Pro-life sign-bearers greet voters at the Soddy-Daisy community center on election day.
By David Tulis
My wife, Jeannette, hold a post with chit-chat and an “Amendment 1 is pro-life” sign, and at 5 yesterday I relieved her at a Baptist church in Dallas Hollow Road in Soddy-Daisy, and helpd my post until 8.
The pro-life amendment to the Tennessee constitution won by narrow margins, for which we have God to thank as the people in the state redeem their posterity one law at a time, one close abortion clinic at a time, one new baby’s birth at a time. Judging by comments and gestures by passersby into the evening, I had supposed a 60 percent 40 percent margin in favor.
Many good people whom I addressed on Amendment 2, about judicial elections, had been deceived by heavy advertising. The barrage of spots said that supporting Amendment 2 lets you keep your right to vote for judges — as if somehow opposing it were a vote to yield that right. In fact, Amendment 2’s success deletes from the constitution the right of the people to elect judges. It takes away that gold and gives them the pyrite of judicial retention elections, which for any one judge comes after eight years in office. Jeannette and I changed numerous minds in the course of the day among people who said they had been confused by the debate.
What strikes me about that conflict is what it represents of the loss of liberality in Tennessee. The establishment claim on the judiciary removes a connection between the people and their judges. We will now see a deep and narrow stream for judicial politics and electioneering, rather than a wide and shallow stream the constitution of 1870 envisioned. Politics will remain an affair of guild and political relationships, of professional connections and lawyer conferences, of connections in the halls of power rather than any appeal to the common people.
My developing story line
Thank you for your interest in this website and, as you are able, in my second Nooganomics.com platform, Hot News Talk Radio 1240 AM. Mine is the story of the blogger who comes to own a radio station. My partner is a remarkable counterrevolutionary and “aggressive claimant in person,” Sab “Confederate Mike” Cupelli. We are expanding in the AM market and seeking entry into FM in the Chattanooga area. Hot News Talk Radio is my prospect for a living, and a delightful change of career from the newspaper field, where last I worked 24 years at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
The story line that layered itself over my election coverage is that of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. This story is perhaps the longest overlooked environmental story in Chattanooga. The suspected offender is national government — even today, even on election day over the River City, its jets were busy creating the yellow-purple haze that we keep noticing aloft. The sky is congealed. We have congealed politics in which for every election, the politician always wins. Our politics are somewhat frozen in place, hardened. Whenever we choose the lesser of two evils, we inevitably wind up with an evil party in office — a Republican or a Democrat — with no hope of relief except the next election.
The sky striping story has brought me flak from my betters at such places as CNR — Chattanooga News and Review on Facebook, where I am the only person easy to miss because I speak quietly and reasonably. But the flak and doubts haven’t convinced me that my eyes and my reading have led me astray.
Elections give us the impression that we control the destiny of the state and its people. That’s true, in some respects, especially with amendments. We participate in elections because we care and we think our vote matters. Sky striping is a story difficult to handle, for it is really about the deep state, or what a university prof calls the double state. As the story makes itself felt, we realize how slight ordinary politics really are, how incapable they are of changing the existing system, or even its mass of policy more than a millimeter. Elections makes us think we have a say in the direction of state and policy. Sky striping strips the pretense elections create that we have a say. Sky striping is an exercise of naked power, heedless of the legal environmental benefits and safeguards imposed upon us by regulators such as EPA. Sky striping drains meaning from politics, deadens it. State interest vs. public interest, and state interest wins.
Careless of our fate?
In my readings this morning in election and artillery sermons from the American colonial period, I came across these lines from preacher Samuel Davies in a text called “In Times of War,” given in Hanover, Va., in 1755.
And, O Virginia! O my country! shall I not lament for you? You are a Valley of Vision, favored with the light of revelation from heaven, and the gospel of Jesus: you have long been the region of peace and tranquility; the land of ease, plenty, and liberty. But what do I now see? What do I now hear? I see your brazen skies, your parched soil, your withering fields, your dried springs, and your scanty harvests. Methinks I also hear the sound of the war trumpet, and see garments rolled in blood; your frontiers ravaged by revengeful savages; your territories invaded by French betrayal and violence. Methinks I see slaughtered families, the hairy scalps clotted with gore — the horrid arts of Indian and popish torture!
And, alas! in the midst of all these alarms — I see your inhabitants generally asleep, and careless of your fate! I see vice braving the skies; true religion neglected and insulted; mirth and folly have still their places of rendezvous. Let our country, let religion, liberty, property, and all be lost — yet still they will have their diversions! Luxury still spreads her feast, and unmans her effeminate guests. In spite of laws, in spite of proclamations, in spite of the principle of self-preservation, your officers are generally inactive, your militia neglected and undisciplined, your inhabitants unprovided with arms; everything in a defenseless posture; but few Abrahams to intercede for you; but few to stand in the gap, and make up the breach, to prevent the eruption of vengeance; but few mourning for the sins of the land.
“The Lord, the LORD Almighty, called you to weep and mourn. He told you to shave your heads in sorrow for your sins and to wear clothes of sackcloth to show your remorse. But instead, you dance and play; you slaughter sacrificial animals, feast on meat, and drink wine.
A trail becomes a legitimate cloud
A jet plume laid across west Chattanooga at about 10 a.m. Election Day morning, with Erlanger Medical Center at right. This photo is the first in a sequence, below.
The jet cloud slowly moves and dissipates, shedding what looks like strands of particulate in the stratosphere (eight miles up).
The rich trail drifts onward, turning slowly into a cloud (public policy, evidently, favors clouds over stark sunlight).
The jet trail is so distinct it prompts Josh Davis, working nearby, to text me with a heads up. I am across the street in a doctor’s office with an aged mother.
If you lay the body of a dead snake atop a wall, and cut a long line its full length, the carcass will bleed down the stones. So, here.
A chemtrail becomes an honest cloud over Chattanooga on election day.
The process of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is less a mystery if one goes back to the patents from the 1960s and 1970s for aerosol dispersement.
The great fan dissipates over Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge.
Later in the day, a shopping center in Hixson. All day today jets laid stripes in the sky. An FAA spokeswoman this week says they are merely water vapor and sends me a link to the NOAA website.
- This view absorbs me as I do polling station work tonight at New Salem Baptist church in Soddy-Daisy. A jet streaks across a well manured Chattanooga sky, with a so-called “chembo” evident amid the brilliant aluminum particulate.
Sky striping persists all Election Day, with the domain well worked by evening. Even after dark jets laid misty stripes in the light of a near-full moon.
